European Union

Edward Lucas made the interesting point on BBC Radio Four’s Start the Week this morning, that almost unnoticed amid the weekend’s press coverage of Russia’s disputes with the British Council and Royal Academy, President Putin went to Bulgaria to sign a gas pipeline deal that closes a circle as elegantly, in its way, as Matisse’s La Danse.

I am in Vienna, a guest of the Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, who, for their 25th anniversary, gathered a group ``Towards a European Public Space; International workshop on European media networking''. Mostly new serious media types, with a few academics (and some who were both) and one Commission representative, Habermas hovered over the day.

There was lots of really good material--Mark Hunter's combination of INSEAD hard-headedness with a career in investigative journalism; Jeremy Druker's description of TOL's training/editorial business model; Thierry Chervel, founder of the wonderful SignAndSight project, etc... I will have time to return to these.

In his speech to the Labour party conference this afternoon, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband again confirmed Britain's commitment to seeing Turkey join the EU. It's not, however, a very popular opinion in the continent as a whole. France and Germany, in particular, are deeply against the idea - and if France and Germany team up, there's not normally much chance of the other EU member states getting their way.

The potential for Turkish entry allows lazy leader writers yet more excuses to trot out the same old editorials about the potential problems/benefits/dangers of an islamic country joining the EU (hoards of dusky-skinned Mohammedans and the collapse of western European society vs. a long-overdue acknowledgement of the importance of Ottoman, Arabic and wider Islamic cultures on the development of the European identity, take your pick),so I'll try and avoid that.

Britain's best-selling daily paper has, unsurprisingly considering its Australian-American owner's vehement euroscepticism, come out with all guns blazing today, ahead of Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour party conference. In a classic piece of Sun hyperbole, and with graphics reminiscent of the opening credits of Dad's Army, the paper's leader is laying out just what our new Prime Minister has to do to maintain the support of its billionaire Australian-born American tax exile owner in any forthcoming general election.

The caricature of anti-EU types in the UK has, for the last thirty years or so at least, been of xenophobic, flag-waving middle class little Englanders who love the monarchy and aristocracy - relics of a bygone age. In the same period, pro-EU types have come to be stereotyped as wishy-washy liberals, looking at the utopian EU ideal while ignoring the grotty reality. Both are, naturally, massive oversimplifications.

But how, considering the fundamental lack of democracy within the EU, can any democratic-minded person possibly support the European Union? I count myself in that group, and am not sure if I have any rational answer.

An interesting report on OurKingdom from the Labour conference fringe on a meeting discussing Britain's relationship with Europe. Yes - a major British political party actually discussing, rather than ducking the issue that all have been trying to avoid now for years - albeit only on the conference fringe, and albeit not really tackling the big questions, but focussing once again on the referendum issue. (A bit like sitting in a plane that's rapidly hurtling towards the ground with its engines aflame while arguing about whether trying to unblock the loo might clear the air a bit, but still...) The Foreign Secretary was in attendance, so who knows - maybe they've finally realised that the EU is a significant factor in British politics and worthy of debate?

"Political machinery does not act of itself. As it is first made, so it has to be worked, by men, and even by ordinary men. It needs, not their simple acquiescence, but their active participation" - John Stuart Mill, Considerations On Representative Government (1861)

One of the prime aims of deliberative polling is to get around the problem of rational ignorance, the tendency of voters in a democracy to ignore issues that affect them due to the perception that their vote, just one in millions, can have little impact. Without an informed public that feels that its opinion counts, the accountability of any government - or in the case of the EU, proto-government - is greatly diminished. When the electorate in question is nearly half a billion strong, and when the issues on which they are voting are as complex as those involved with the EU, rational ignorance becomes an even greater problem.

At the top end of national political power for four decades, President of France 1974-1981, the husband of the daughter of a Count and (supposedly) a descendant of the kings of France with a family tree that can be traced back to Charlemagne - you don't get many more perfect examples of the political elite than Giscard d'Estaing.

When he was put in charge of the Convention on the Future of Europe, the body that eventually drafted the aborted EU constitution, it was one of the most idiotic PR moves in the EU's history - not only was there no way that a politician so senior could possibly understand the needs of the ordinary citizen, but Giscard is also a proponent of that dangerous beast a "United States of Europe", an extreme form of the ideal which all but the most fervent EU-enthusiasts have long since abandoned as unrealistic.

Two-time Prime Minister of Italy Giuliano Amato should, on paper, be a classic pro-EU figure. Currently serving as Interior Minister in the government of former President of the European Commission Romano Prodi, he was also Vice-President of the Convention on the Future of Europe, which from 2001-2003 drafted the text of the now semi-abandoned EU Constitution.

With the new Reform Treaty still containing the vast majority of the contents of the constitution that Amato helped to draft, you'd think he'd still be all for it - and the assumption would be that, after the shock of the French and Dutch referendums, he'd be opposed to any further referenda on the new treaty. But as it turns out, it's not quite as simple as that.

Even the most fervently pro-EU person on the continent would not try to argue that the European Union is fine as it is. Hence the failed Constitution, hence the new (or perhaps not so new) Reform Treaty. The arguments over Europe's future have instead come because no one seems to be able to agree what kind of reform should take place, with all member states wanting something different.

A member of the European Parliament since 1979, Danish politician Jens-Peter Bonde is certainly an EU-sceptic - but not quite in the classically British sense of seemingly instinctive flag-waving patriotism. He may well co-chair the European Parliament's Independence and Democracy Group with UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, yet his centre-left EU-scepticism is based on decades of in-depth analysis - and rather than a desire to pull out of the union, a genuine hope for radical reform backed up by a democratic mandate.

Seated amidst the grandeur of the Bibliotheque Solvay in Brussels, the Tomorrow's Europe event launched with a debate over such small and easily-answered topics as the nature of democracy and the future of the European Union. The very topics, in fact, that this blog hopes to discuss over the coming weeks.

With a panel featuring everyone from world statesmen to distinguished academics, it's easy to get overwhelmed, so who are they all? Well, from left to right in the above photo:

A gray sky hung over Brussels yesterday evening as we all piled in to the century-old Bibliotheque Solvay in the heart of Parc Leopold, the hilly oasis of green tucked alongside the European Parliament in Brussels, for the official launch of the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll. Whether the clouds would part or the rain begin to fall it was impossible to say.

Much the same could be said for the current state of the EU. In the last two years, since the rejection of the European Constitution by French and Dutch voters, the European Union has likewise been decidedly overcast, its future unclear.